Example embodiments of inventive concepts relate to capillary exchange devices and systems used in semiconductor wire bonding, for example, to capillary exchange devices and systems for automatically exchanging capillaries used in a semiconductor wire bonding.
Semiconductor wire bonding is included in a semiconductor package manufacturing process. In other words, a wire bonding is one of the processes which may be used in manufacturing a semiconductor package in which a semiconductor chip and a substrate are connected by using a gold wire (for example) to flow an electrical signal so that a semiconductor may have electrical properties.
A capillary used in wire bonding may be a micro-tube used for direct attachment of a gold wire along a trajectory of the gold wire. When wire bond equipment is compared to a sewing machine, it may be said that a capillary, a wire, and a semiconductor chip and a substrate correspond to a needle, thread, and cloth, respectively. Since the capillary is a consumable article having a limited useful lifetime, the capillary needs to be exchanged when the useful lifetime ends.
However, in a conventional capillary exchange process, wire bond equipment may be programmed to generate an alarm to call for a line worker when a certain amount of capillary has been used. In response to the alarm, the line worker may exchange an old capillary for a new capillary in the wire bond equipment that generated the alarm. In other words, conventionally, the line workers manually perform capillary exchange.
In an actual semiconductor packaging process field, the number of pieces of wire bonding equipment often amounts to several hundreds of units due to the characteristics of wire bonding. When a large number of capillaries is manually exchanged by line workers in a wire bonding process, the equipment is halted during the exchange of capillaries, which may lead deterioration in productivity.
Also, a capillary exchange time varies according to the skill level of line workers. In particular, a bond level variation is generated due to a capillary setting variation according to skill level of line workers, which may cause a setting quality defect.